Monsters before bedtime

Monday 4 May 2009

The final episode of Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities last night and a massive turnout for the event, let down however by the performance of everything else around it, although Eleventh Hour won its timeslot it still lost over half the audience from the Underbelly lead in.

This raises a question – why on earth did Nine screen a double episode of Underbelly 3 weeks ago, when they could of used that first week back to debut Eleventh Hour (clear of Biggest Loser) and have an extra week next week to cement an aud for the show? Just a nonsensical decision really – and that first week back they really took a bath on the audience, only recovering to it’s median level this week.

Next Year if there is indeed, another story, I’d advise the geniuses at Nine to hold off screening it until after the Easter break to make the most of the available Audience and have an unbroken run. Also I’d advise against double-eps – you get the most bang for your buck in the 8.30 hour, which with a 2 mill aud is enough to win you the night, there’s every reason to stretch those shares out to 13 weeks rather than compress them into eleven.

Also for f***’s sake next year figure out what you want to do with the 9.30 hour before you bow – this year was a dog’s breakfast, Ladette to Lady (a completely unrelated reality skein), Crime Investigation Australia (a Cable repurposing) and now Eleventh Hour (should have put it here from the start)

The new Nine 7.30 hour reality skeins are not as popular as that Custom Mash-Up that preceded them with Ten actually winning the 7.30 hour with a great debut aud for The Recruits, which along with Masterchef was their bright spot for the night.

The return of Supernatural, though, was less lively, managing only a paltry 633,000. The problem for Supernatural is pretty simple really in my estimation – it’s aimed squarely at teenagers most of whom probably have to be at school the next day and therefore can’t stay up to watch it.

The other point is it’s a genre show, mixing sci-fi and horror. We’ve seen year after year high-concept shows thriving at 8.30 (think Lost, 24, Prison Break, Heroes, yes Supernatural, Charmed) and the second they’re moved to 9.30 the audience dwindles, Supernatural is the only one here holding onto a 9.30 slot by the skin of its teeth!

So what kind of shows are suitable for 9.30? Well lets look at what works, procedurals – Lie to Me, NCIS, Criminal Minds, Cold Case, Bones, CSI Miami, light entertainment – The Footy Show, Enough Rope, 20 to 01, and soaps like All Saints, even Brothers and Sisters looks respectable this week!

Essentially I don’t think these kinds of shows work at 9.30 – Ten has the perfect out, they can swap GNW with Supernatural, that will give more people the chance to catch GNW (getting it out of the way of Desperate Housewives and Four Corners) and give the kids a chance to watch Monsters before bedtime!

An Extra Boost for the Hot Seat

Monday 20 April 2009
So Underbelly has been in reruns for two weeks and look – the audience dropped, remarkably. While 1.8 million probably means it will be the top show for the week – it’s still an even 300,000 viewers less than it’s last new episode and a far cry from it’s mammoth premiere figure.

Most of the drop off appears to have occurred in Sydney (down 152,000) and Brisbane (down 67,000).

Aside from this Nine can be pleased that after 7.30 they swept the night leaving everyone else to pick up the scraps.

Ten fared the worst with one of those el-cheapo specials that seem to be filler for the E! channel raking in a dismal 624,000 and landing a distant fifth behind the other broadcasters, this seriously diminished the performance of Good News Week which lost to a rather compelling Four Corners special on how the recession is affecting the city of Wollongong and the surrounding Illawarra region.

Scrubs watchers take heart that although the show placed fourth in its slot it did rise week on week by 83,000.

Finally Eddie McGuire’s new foray into TV, Millionaire Hot Seat had it’s debut last night. This is Nine’s latest attempt to create a stable lead-in to their 6pm news – in the 5.30 slot (with Extra in Brisbane) Nine raked in 699,000 viewers to Seven’s 776,000 and Ten’s 977,000. To be only 77k behind Seven is much better than they have done in the past – hopefully for Nine the show will build and not go backwards, but they have their work cut out for them – the only market where Hot Seat beat Deal was Melbourne, they got a good overall number because Extra won it’s timeslot in Brisbane.

Auntie takes a beating - Monday 9 March 2009

Another Monday, another large body count and another channel nine victory.

Underbelly actually grew week on week by another 34,000 viewers while Desperate Housewives dropped by 39,000! Meanwhile timeslot also-ran Good News Week built an extra 44,000 people onto its base registering over the 800,000 mark and back out of danger, 4 corners was hit hard with 85,000 viewers tuning out week on week.

In fact the ABC has taken quite a pummelling on Monday nights in recent weeks – especially considering their relative strength last year, case in point is 9.30pm:

There were more people watching TV at 9.30 last night than were watching at the comparable hour last week, Brothers & Sisters was up 22,000 viewers, Crime Investigation Australia lifted a whopping 193,000 week on week (the night’s best improver) and a rerun of NCIS brought an additional 149,000 people who couldn’t be stuffed with Dexter the previous week, yet ABC’s 9.30 entry – The Cut actually lost 81,000 viewers week on week??? This is after losing 83,000 viewers the previous week – there’s not a lot of people left to lose here!

Now I haven’t seen it so I cannot judge whether it’s a turkey or not, but bleeding viewers at a regular rate is not exactly a vote of confidence.

In fact thinking about it – I don’t even know what its about, I’ve never seen a promo and I watch the ABC sometimes for 7.30 report and Lateline - perhaps the ABC’s lack of in-show breaks is hurting their ability to promote new shows, we’ve become so trained to hit the remote the moment a program finishes that we no longer stick around for the coming attractions.

I watch even less SBS but I can tell you more of what they have on just by virtue of promos during the programs. Sounds like a tricky problem for the ABC for the years to come.

Monday 3 March 2009

Viewing on the whole was down on last Monday night with the biggest week on week hit going to Nine’s 9.30 hour which sunk, last week Nine followed their megahit Underbelly with a rebroadcast of the Oscar ceremony, this week forced to find a suitable lead-out for the country’s number one show they settled on Crime Investigation Australia, a doco series repurposed from the Crime & Investigation channel.

At first glance you would think that a true crime documentary would be a perfect fit with a true crime drama but it seems that it isn’t, the doco lost a whopping 1.161 million viewers (51.99%) from it’s lead in.

You would also think that Nine would want to use the most valuable real-estate on television right now to promote something that would continue on after the first 12 weeks of the season, what that would be exactly is unclear, the channel nine vault doesn’t seem to be bursting with hidden treasures lately.

Seven’s Brothers and Sisters got the predictable lift with the female skewing Oscars out of the way, while other 9.30 entries stagnated, The Cut can be considered a flop and Dexter, why Ten is persisting with this when surely there is an audience for them at 9.30, especially considering the sub-par competition, is beyond me. Call me crazy but if the mass-audience dropped Lost, Heroes and Prison Break, what makes Ten think they’ll pick up a violent, adults only serial a year into the storyline?

Some good news for Ten was that Neighbours gained while both it’s current affair competitors lost audience in the 6.30pm slot with ACA down 93,000 and Today Tonight down 121,000 – Neighbours was up 72,000 viewers and is tantalisingly close to that million mark – perhaps old Harold was holding them back!

So You Think You Can Dance appears to have fallen into a similar patters as Australian Idol last season where the Sunday show posts an acceptable figure of 1.2 – 1.3 million and the results show hovers around the 900,000 mark – given that this seems to be the pattern Ten needs to shake this up when Idol rolls around – maybe move the results show back a day or two (probably Wednesday their other struggling night) this would clear the decks and give ten the chance to develop something substantial for Mondays which could carry through the whole year, if they were game.

Meanwhile How I Met Your Mother seems to have also settled around the 900k mark which is not a disaster by any means but with Seven blowing two new eps a week they’ll run out of fresh stock before Nine run out of Sheen, that would be a massive miscalculation on Seven’s part – find a show to go at 7.30 and save the new Mother ep for 8pm, moving it out of the way of it’s main competitor – I guarantee it’s figures will look healthier – in fact I wager that if Seven split their reporting into two half hour eps we would probably see an improvement between ep 1 and ep 2.

Serial Killer found bludgeoned to death with gold statue - Monday 23 February 2009

Underbelly continued its stride into the record books with a third week over two million, although losing 174,000 viewers week on week. Perhaps they were watching the season finale of Top Gear on SBS which ran for 90 minutes and clocked an extra 190,000 on the meter.

Customs and Two and a Half Men both dropped slightly also, affected by the driving show, whereas offerings on the other three nets held their ground from last week.

Good News Week has some minor good news lifting 65,000 viewers while Four Corners dropped by 193,000 but the real spoiler of the night was the Oscars which caused a minor drop for Dexter (yes its still on) 23,000 viewers and a significant drop for Brothers & Sisters (which would be pitching to the same aud) 130,000 viewers – the Sally Field borefest should stabilise next week when Nine plays it safe with Crime Investigation Australia – but with that move we can consider Dexter cooked.

Nine’s unconventional strategy of airing the Academy Awards show live and then fitting a prime time replay around their schedule paid off nicely allowing them to capitalise on the awards twice over without disrupting what is currently their biggest night.

Bad News Week - Monday 16 February 2009

Underbelly virtually held all of its gargantuan audience second week in. This is certainly shaping up to be high watermark in Australian television and channel Nine’s best chance at promoting their 2009 lineup, infact anyone with their TV tuned to Nine last night would have been inundated with promos for their struggling Wednesday lineup.

A decision which, a few weeks ago, I blasted as being sheer idiocy has actually worked out well for Nine (just a moment whilst I fetch a hat to eat) that decision being the axing of The Big Bang Theory replacing it with a hastily cobbled together factual series Customs, err sorry Vince Colosimo: Customs! I wish Nine had persisted with Big Bang in this slot because it strikes me that this Customs show is attracting a lot of folks waiting around for the next program, but anyway – despite the short-term thinking the move is still a great success.

Also a success is the Australian Ladette to Lady – question is can they carry that across to Tuesday nights and how long does the series even go for – the opening scenes suggested that the course at Eggleston Hall ran for four weeks – that doesn’t seem like a very long series to me.

Desperate Housewives lifted a little last night and incredibly Brothers & Sisters retained 94% of its audience which must be some kind of record. I fully expect to see 11 more weeks of Friday/Saturday encores for these two shows to keep the viewers up to speed while they flirt with the crims over of Nine.

Speaking of Encores, the remaining 500,000 people who haven’t seen Dexter on DVD or Showcase were entertained I guess – but Ten is hurting badly on Monday night – even after what was a fairly solid start to the evening by Neighbours and So You Think You Can Dance.

Good News Week has dropped week on week by 61,000 viewers while Four Corners rose by 143,000. Indeed these two shows seem to be fighting over largely the same audience and seeing as the ABC ain’t gonna budge it might be wise for Ten to move GNW to 9.30 (there’s a lot of Ex – Enough Rope viewers looking for something to watch) and Dexter to 10.30.

Of course that leaves the 8.30 problem – given that the slot will be a loss for the next 10 weeks anyway, why not encore screenings or Out of the Blue!! (OK maybe that’s going too far!)

Ahhh so that's how they do it! - Monday 9 February 2009

Several months ago I wrote over on my list22 blog that one of the colossal screw ups of 2008 was Nine’s handling of Underbelly and it’s subsequent non-broadcast throughout Victoria.

The show, banned in Victoria (Melbourne typically furnishes the biggest FTA TV audiences in Australia - especially for locally based prods) clocked a premiere rating of 1,320,000 in four cities. It's very plausible to assume that Melbourne would have added anywhere from 500,000 - 800,000 to that number had the broadcast gone ahead.

Well last night we got to see exactly what kind of interest Melbourne would have in last year’s qualified smash hit and the answer was…

Well just look at the figures!

Look at them!!

Holy Fuck!!!

After a week of lurching from one bad programming move to another channel Nine has officially dealt itself back in the game.